BRIDGETOWN, Bar­ba­dos – Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) has named vet­er­an Bar­ba­di­an all-rounder Ros­ton Chase as their new West In­dies Test cap­tain, while his coun­try­man Jomel War­ri­can will serve as vice-cap­tain.

The ea­ger­ly an­tic­i­pat­ed an­nounce­ment was made on Fri­day, fol­low­ing a meet­ing at Kens­ing­ton Oval where the 33-year-old Chase was unan­i­mous­ly ap­proved by the CWI Board of Di­rec­tors.

Chase beat out five oth­er can­di­dates for the job: John Camp­bell, Tevin Im­lach, Joshua Da Sil­va, Justin Greaves, and War­ri­can, which was left va­cant fol­low­ing for­mer cap­tain Kraigg Brath­waite’s sur­pris­ing res­ig­na­tion ear­li­er this year.

The mid­dle-or­der bats­man and off-spin­ner has played 49 Test match­es since mak­ing his de­but against In­dia in 2016, scor­ing 2265 runs at an av­er­age of 26.33, in­clu­sive of five cen­turies and 11 half-cen­turies.

Chase has al­so tak­en 85 wick­ets at an econ­o­my rate of 3.45.

His first se­ries as cap­tain will be a daunt­ing one, with the West In­dies set to take on world num­ber one Aus­tralia in a three-match Test se­ries be­gin­ning June 25 at Kens­ing­ton Oval.

Mean­while, 32-year-old left-arm spin­ner War­ri­can has played 19 Test match­es and tak­en 73 wick­ets at an econ­o­my rate of 3.05.

He starred with both bat and ball on the tour of Pak­istan in Jan­u­ary, help­ing the vis­i­tors reg­is­ter their first Test win on Pak­istan soil in over 30 years on their way to ty­ing the se­ries 1-1.

In­ter­est­ing­ly, CWI al­so re­vealed that Shai Hope, the cur­rent ODI and T20I cap­tain, re­spect­ful­ly de­clined con­sid­er­a­tion to fo­cus on his ex­ist­ing lead­er­ship roles.

The fi­nal rec­om­men­da­tion was based on a weight­ed scor­ing sys­tem across six key ar­eas: lead­er­ship, re­spect with­in the team, crick­et knowl­edge, per­son­al con­duct, me­dia and com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills, and the re­sults of the psy­cho­me­t­ric eval­u­a­tion.

The top-ranked can­di­dates were rec­om­mend­ed as cap­tain and vice-cap­tain and sub­se­quent­ly ap­proved by the CWI Board.

Fol­low­ing the com­ple­tion of a ro­bust and struc­tured process, CWI pres­i­dent, Dr. Kishore Shal­low, praised its in­tegri­ty and in­no­va­tion.

“This se­lec­tion process is one of the most com­pre­hen­sive and for­ward-think­ing we have un­der­tak­en.

“I am deeply im­pressed by the pro­fes­sion­al­ism, ob­jec­tiv­i­ty, and strate­gic think­ing that shaped the fi­nal de­ci­sion. It sets a new bench­mark for lead­er­ship ap­point­ments in West In­dies crick­et,” Dr Shal­low said.

West In­dies head coach Daren Sam­my said he was look­ing for­ward to work­ing with the new cap­tain.

“I ful­ly en­dorse this ap­point­ment. Our new cap­tain has earned the re­spect of his peers, un­der­stands the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty that comes with the role, and has shown the lead­er­ship qual­i­ties we need to take this team for­ward,” Sam­my said.

“I urge fans across the re­gion to ral­ly be­hind him—we’re build­ing some­thing spe­cial.”

CMC